An Unlikely Family
by Sia Scarlett
Summary: What might have happened after the end of the series...
1. Chapter 1

She wasn't sure what made her come back. Leaving when Spike did had seemed like the right decision at the time. She was Faye Valentine. She didn't need anyone or anything. If that damned fool wanted to go out and get himself killed for some broad, what did she care? She walked out of the Bebop that day, intent on leaving and never coming back. She didn't need anyone. She could collect bounties just fine all on her own.

A week after walking away, Faye Valentine found herself staring at the Bebop across a loaded dock on Ganymede. She walked towards it, her body slowly shifting from a steady walk into a run. Jet didn't even seem surprised to look up and see her standing above him, hands pressed against her ribs as she panted for breath. He only murmured in that gravelly tone of his, "You'd be able to run without heaving like a dog if you quit smoking," before snuffing out his own smoke and ducking back into the ship.

Faye didn't know what made her follow. The Bebop was the same and yet... not. Without Ed and her damned dog, it was a hell of a lot quieter. That was for sure. Without Spike... Faye didn't want to think about that. Jet didn't talk much. He spent a lot of time with his plants and Faye spent a lot of time smoking cigarettes and staring at the stars. They went after enough minor bounties to keep them in cigarettes, food, and the occasional bottle of booze that Jet would slip back into his quarters with. Faye knew better to bug him on his drinking nights. She didn't bug him much at all anymore.

A month after her return, a month of uneasy silences and half-hearted work, Ed put through a signal to the ship. They didn't talk about it much, but landed on Earth and picked Ed up from the orphanage. In typical Ed fashion, she didn't explain how she ended up back in the orphanage or where her father was. Neither Jet nor Faye pressed too hard for answers. Instead, things seemed to fall back into the same patterns they had formed before. Except for the hole in their tidy little quartet that everyone thought about and no one would speak of.

Faye lifted herself off the chair and padded through the ship to Jet's room. He sat on a stool, hunched over a tiny tree and snipping a tiny piece. She leaned in the doorway to watch. After snipping, he'd ease back, frown at the bonsai tree, and then snip something else. She wondered if he knew how ridiculous he looked with those tiny scissors in his huge hands. Once, she might have said as much. Now, without knowing where she stood, Faye wasn't sure what was over the line and what was not.

"She deserves some sort of life, Faye. Something more than what she's had." Jet's voice startled Faye and she flinched a little. He kept snipping at his plant as he spoke, "I've screwed up a lot of things in my life. I'm done screwing up. You and me... well, we ain't anyone's picture of a perfect family, but we're all she's got. For some reason, she likes you. You're about as warm as an ice cube, but she likes you."

"Thanks for the compliment." Faye tried to sound sarcastic, but knew she was failing miserably at it.

Jet set the scissors aside and placed the plant back on the shelf. He stood and faced her, staring for just a minute before moving for the door and making as if to squeeze past her. Faye shrunk away when he drew near and averted her eyes. Jet stopped in the doorway, standing only inches away. "If you're gonna take off again, do it now. Before any of us can get used to this. I'm tired of my friends running out on me."

Faye looked up. Jet's expression was grim and there was the faintest look of resigned sadness in his eyes. "I'm not going anywhere, Jet."

"Good." Jet nodded and moved away, ambling down the hall as he muttered, "Gotta make some food. I bet the kid is getting hungry."

Faye leaned back against the wall and watched Jet walk away. She wasn't sure what he wanted from her. She was no motherly type. Not by a long shot. Once she had humored herself with playing big sister to Ed, but it was just a diversion between schemes. Maybe now she could play the role for real. Discovering her family home destroyed, discovering the life she had once nothing but dust between her fingers, losing Spike... it was enough to make a girl crave a little stability.

Stability? Ha. As if there ever really was such a thing. But what could it hurt to stick around for a little bit? She had nothing better to do, nowhere else to go. Besides, Ed could be really cute when she wasn't being annoying as hell. What could it hurt to stay? Just temporarily, of course.

Everything was temporary. Even family.


	2. Chapter 2

The walls were closing in on her. Faye had felt that coming on for weeks. Jet and Ed were tip-toeing around her like she was a bundle of dynamite that might explode if they jostled it. She certainly felt like it. There was something trapped inside her, something buried deep that was tunneling its way out. Every inch it moved closer to the surface, Faye could feel her already tenuous grip on sanity slipping.

When Jet announced that they would be docking on Mars for food and supplies, Faye wanted to kiss him. Luckily, she wasn't that crazy yet. Jet had barely put down the landing gear and parked in the spot directed by the controller, before she was at the door, demanding to be let off.

Jet leveled a look at her, his heavy brows furrowing. Faye looked away. Ever since their agreement in his plant room, Jet had expected things out of her that were feeling more and more like an imposition. What half-cocked notion had made her agree to this whole Mommy thing in the first place? She needed her space. She needed a drink. She needed to i breathe /i .

Faye could almost read Jet's mind as he stared at her. He thought she was going to run off. That is why he kept her so close. She sighed in exasperation. "Look, I'm just going out for a few hours. You get supplies, I'll go take care of some business." His glare didn't soften a bit. She sighed again and put her hand on her hips. "I'll be back."

"What about Ed?" Jet's voice rumbled in a slightly menacing manner, like the thunder before a lightning strike.

"Ed will be fine here. She was taking care of herself long before we decided to do the job for her." Faye felt her shoulders sagging a little as she said in a soft voice, "Please. I just need some time alone."

Without another word, Jet let her out of the ship. When she turned around to thank him, he was gone. Faye shrugged and stepped out onto the dock. She stopped the nearest person she could find and asked him where the bar was. He gestured in the opposite direction with an oil-stained hand before rushing off. Faye moved in the direction indicated and lit a cigarette as she walked. After the first drag, she smiled. She was feeling better already.

A few hours and way too many whiskey shots later, Faye was in the comfortable fuzzy territory between drunk and completely trashed. Even with the alcohol sloshing in her belly, she felt light as air. She reached out to order another shot, but the bartender refused her money. She could feel her temper sliding loose of her self-imposed control, like a bullet slipping into the chamber of a gun. Before she could fire, Faye backed out of the bar and stumbled out into the street. It was probably time she got home anyway. Jet the Mother Hen would undoubtedly be worried.

Outside, the buildings around her shifted and rolled as if they had been built on foundations of water. Faye tried to walk a few steps, but had to stop and steady herself against a wall. There weren't many people out tonight. Exactly what time was it anyway? A flickering neon light stung at her eyes and she glanced up. The silhouette of a hand with an eye in the center shuddered above her.

Thick purple curtains hung over the windows of the shop. A palm reader. Faye felt a smirk running over her lips as she shuffled to the door and tugged it open. Inside, a thick haze of incense hung in the air, like smoky perfume. It was dark and Faye collided into a chair. With a grunt and muffled curse, Faye pressed on. "Hello? Anyone here?"

"Back here, child. C'mon back," a warm voice called out from some other room.

Faye found a doorway and pushed aside a thick curtain. It was a bare room for all that Faye could notice, dominated only by a round table covered in blue cloth and two cheap chairs. One was empty. In the other, a black woman with a wide smile and even wider hips waited. "Hello, honey. Wasn't sure I was gonna get anymore folk tonight."

Faye collapsed in the chair and swayed a little, coughing at the sudden burning in her throat. Suddenly, she felt amazingly sober. Either that was cheap alcohol or this lady had something in the air that killed Faye's buzz. She scowled and reached for the pouch at her hip. "How much?"

The woman's smile faded for a moment and she glanced at something just over Faye's shoulder. She blinked and her smile returned. "Free for you, sugar. Now, I like to get properly introduced before I do a reading. I'm Zinqua. What's your name?"

"Faye. Faye Valentine."

"That's a pretty, pretty name. Alright, lay out your hands palms up." Zinqua grinned encouragingly and nodded at the table. Fay reluctantly placed her hands out and wondered what the hell she had been thinking coming in here. She'd been drunk. That was the only explanation.

Faye watched Zinqua study her hands with a thoughtful frown, waiting to hear what load of bull this lady was going to lay on her. No doubt something about a bright future with lots of money and happiness in it. As if. Or maybe she'd tell her about a handsome stranger she would meet who would steal her heart away. Faye had already met that stranger and he was a bastard that ran out on his friends.

Finally, Zinqua made a noise in the back of her throat and eased back in her chair. Her smile was gone. "Oh baby, you have so many broken lines. They're all broken..."

Something about her voice was so sad that Faye felt something twist in her stomach. Broken. Broken. She hadn't needed a fortune-teller to inform her of that. She knew she was broken every time she looked at her reflection or saw the way those that she cared for most looked at her. Even the damned dog looked at her like she was cracked down the middle. Faye felt a quick retort, a cutting jab bubble up in her throat, but Zinqua spoke before she could mutter it.

"The life line is completely broken. Like you died and then came back from the dead. Have you had a near death experience?" She looked up, her dark eyes shimmering with concentration.

"In a manner of speaking." Faye smirked, an expression that faded slowly the longer Zinqua stared at her.

After a few moments, probably realizing she wasn't going to get Faye to say anymore than that, Zinqua continued, "The heart line is broken as well. You loved once, but there was a separation. You are apart."

That was a nail that drove deep in her chest. Faye hunched over a little and forced herself to breathe. After taking a second to compose herself, she looked up to meet Zinqua's eyes. In a low voice, she growled, "I don't need you to tell me what sort of hell I've lived, lady. I don't need you to remind me that everything I touch turns to dust. I don't need any of this." Faye stood to leave, knocking that chair over in the process. Before she could walk away, Zinqua's hands reached out and wrapped around her wrists. Faye tried to pull away but the woman's grip was surprisingly strong.

"They are broken now, but they become whole again. Everything can become whole again. See?" Zinqua flipped Faye's hands over. She looked down and indeed, the fortune-teller was right. The lines broke, but they became whole again. It was a lie. All of it.

Faye made a little noise and jerked away. "No! Not everything! Some people break and they never get put back together!" Tears slid down her cheeks and dripped off the edge of her jaw. Faye took a gasping breath. Spike had never been able to make himself whole again. He had been doomed and she was beginning to suspect that she was as well. Faye ran outside before she said anything else.

In the darkness, the drunkeness forgotten in Zinqua's shop crashed over Faye like a wave, nearly sending her to her knees. She staggered into the street, still sobbing. Somehow, she made her way to the dock and after several minutes spent navigating her way past the other ships, reached the Bebop. Just inside, she collapsed and curled in on herself, still crying as if she couldn't stop.

She wasn't sure how long it took until they found her. Ein made a whimpering sound and through the haze of tears, Faye could see Ed and Jet hovering over her, clad in their pajamas. "Go back to bed, Ed," Jet said and reached down to gather Faye into his arms. Ed made a noise of protest, but scampered off after a sharper command from Jet.

The world sloshed and swayed around Faye. She thought for a moment that she was going to be sick, but the moment passed. Through it all, she couldn't stop crying. She couldn't stop thinking. Even now, Spike's voice in those last few moments, his confession about his eyes... Faye could hear it so clearly. She could feel that tightening in her chest again as the realization that she was never going to see the man she loved again washed over her. Faye pressed her face against Jet's shirt and sobbed harder.

He laid her in her bed and started to remove her boots. Faye stared at the ceiling and choked out, "How he could do this to us, Jet? How? How could he do this to ME?" Jet dropped her boots onto the floor and Faye curled up into a ball. He draped a blanket over her and sat on the edge of the bed next to her.

"I don't know. I've been reading religious texts lately just to try to figure it out. One says that things happen for a reason and I'm trying to understand why this happened. Haven't been able to sort it out yet. He loved this ship. He loved us. He loved you." Jet's voice cracked. "He did. He would never tell you, but he did. He loved you enough to know that he wasn't good enough for you."

Faye covered her head with the blanket. Jet patted her leg in a way that she supposed he thought was reassuring. It was. In a way. His words were not. What good was knowing that Spike had loved her? He was gone, so much rotting flesh in a grave somewhere. What could the fact that he probably loved her mean to her now?

After a few minutes of utter silence, Faye felt Jet stand and heard him pad across the room to the door. She poked her head out from beneath the blankets and said in a raspy tone, still thick with tears, "Should I start calling you Brother Jet now? You gonna become some kinda monk?"

Jet didn't answer. He only laughed and switched off the light.


End file.
